34 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
also a fleshy haloph3^te which commonly assumes the mat 
form on the salt marshes of Kansas. 
It should not be difficult, with suitable physiological 
experiments, to determine the ecological factors which 
induce the formation of mats. Intense light and unob- 
structed space appear to be very important. The wind 
may have some influence. Water supply appears to have 
little or no eflect. Thus Eclipta alba w^as observed to 
form perfect mats on very wet exposed sandbars but in 
shaded situations a little distance away it grew entirely 
erect, some plants being three leet h\g\\.—John H. Schaffher 
in Ohio Naturalist. 
Wanted. — Short notes of interest to the general bot- 
anist are always in demand for this department. Our 
readers are invited to make this the place of publication 
for their botanical items. 
The Passion-flower Medicinal. — It is reported 
that the common passion-flower {PassiBora incarnata) 
which often becomes a weed in the Southern States is of 
value as a drug for inducing sleep and does not produce 
the bad alter effects of other sleep-producing drugs. The 
medicinal quality is said to reside in the root and to be 
poisonous in large doses. 
The Tonka Bean.— The tonqua, tonka or Tonquin 
bean of commerce first reached Europe from the Chinese 
province of Tonquin. It is the dried seed of the fruit of 
Dipterix odorata and it owes its peculiar odor for which 
it is valued to a crystallizable principle known as coum- 
arin. At least two other members of the vegetable king- 
dom Melilotus ofB.cinalis (sweet clover) and Anthoxan- 
thum odoratum (sweet vernal grass) are indebted to the 
same principle for their fragrance. — Indian Planting and 
Gardening. 
